Previews

Huxley

Spiffy:

The whole package is coming along nicely.

Iffy:

We haven¿t had a hardcore play session with said package.

The PC gaming industry is still struggling to find a game that can at least rival, if not topple, the World of WarCraft juggernaut. The most oft-cited solution is to simply do something different than WoW, since it has the fantasy MMORPG formula locked up pretty darn tight. So we welcome game ideas like Huxley, a brave new foray into the MMOFPS genre, a genre with precedents set by titles like World War II Online, PlanetSide and NeoCron. In other words, a genre ripe for a good game to shake it up. Recently, Huxley Production Director Ki Jong "K.J." Kang took us through a whirlwind tour of the latest (at press time) alpha, giving us a better overview of the how the whole game fits together.

Kang divides the FPS genres into two basic feels: the crazy pop sci-fi of an Unreal Tournament or a Quake, and the realism of a Counter-Strike or Rainbow Six. Huxley leans toward sci-fi spectacle but also tries to impart the necessity of tactics and coordination found in more realistic games. Setting-wise, the world has been bombarded with "nuclearites" that smash up the planet and divide the human race into three camps that fight over a substance called "lunarite." These are the Sapien, the Alternative, and the Hybrid. Players get to choose from the first two when creating a character, and the Hybrids serve as the universal mobs for both factions. Within each faction are two sub-types (Kang wouldn't elaborate on the sub-types, so the descriptors are best guesses): Sapiens have One (space humans) and Syn (space elves), while Alternatives have Alteraver (space trolls or orcs) and Alternix (space dark elves).

Looking Like a Big Steel Gorilla

After selecting a race, players are divided into three basic groups: Enforcers (heavy armor), Avengers (medium) and Phantoms (light armor). Appropriately, each armor type is better at certain combat mechanics than others; Enforcers are able to duke it out close and personal, Avengers are flexible, and Phantoms tend to shoot from far, far away. Kang assures us that the three basic armor archetypes (with lots of variations; Kang claims 900 total) plus nine types of weapons (again, with lots of varieties within each type) and the five-skill limit will result in a lot of unique-looking players. Additionally, players can choose trade professions, like a mechanic who can fix up vehicles both in and out of combat.

Once you've got yourself a character and a nice chunk of armor to strut around in, you can partake in one of three basic gameplay modes: Quest, Battlezone and City. The Quest mode is an instanced PvE environment, where it's you or some co-op buddies taking on missions for loot and XP. Kang says that with the controlled environment of the Quest mode, players can experience scripted events and special encounters that couldn't be guaranteed in an MMO environment.
Much of the Quest mode (heck, the game overall) is optimized for a four-man squad. For example, buffs are most beneficial when the squad stays together. In theory, you can try to lone wolf these quests, but when your screen is filled with weird, buglike Hybrids, you'll want some compadres to back you up. Since this is PvE, being clipped just means respawning at your last checkpoint.

Taking out some hybrid critters in Quest

The Battlezone is a PvP area, where players compete in a variety of match types: CTF, Deathmatch (both traditional and Team), Radar Capture, and Parts Pick-Up. The first two are pretty self-explanatory to anyone who's ever booted up an FPS for online play. Radar Capture is a fancy name for matches that focus on capturing and holding objective points -- rather than hoist a flag or wait for a red circle to turn blue, you actually crank a radar station to a friendly orientation. Parts Pick-Up is a team deathmatch with an extra-spicy step: the creation of a spiffy mech. Parts for this mech continually fall from the sky, and players work to snag those parts and bring them back in order to construct the mech and have it win the match. Kang promises that the Battlezone is scalable, with matches being as intimate as one-on-one and as large as 100-vs-100. Whether one or one hundred dudes kill you, you respawn at a friendly capture point and also suffer a slight armor penalty.